Gerald Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive doctoral work in Middle East studies, has lectured on numerous university and other platforms. He has debated many of the best Arab and pro-Arab academics in public debates and on television. Mr. Honigman is widely published in academic journals, magazines, newspapers and other publications.

I mean, if a Jew wants to live a semi-normal life outside of the ghetto, you have a bloomin’ fit.

Reading an AP piece by Tia Goldenberg (don’t let the name fool you…the Inquistion’s Grand Inquistor had his Jews too, as did Hilter, James F-the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway Baker III, and so forth), I just couldn’t resist…

Some background:

The early Church Fathers had a major argument about what to do with the alleged “G_d-killers” (you know who) in their midst.

Some, like Saint (????) John Chrysostom, wanted them dead. Here’s an example of his teaching in his Homily 1, some sixteen centuries ago…

“The Jewish people were driven by their drunkenness and plumpness to the ultimate evil; they kicked about, they failed to accept the yoke of Christ, nor did they pull the plow of his teaching. Another prophet hinted at this when he said: ‘Israel is as obstinate as a stubborn heifer.’ … Although such beasts are unfit for work, they are fit for killing. And this is what happened to the Jews: while they were making themselves unfit for work, they grew fit for slaughter. This is why Christ said: ‘But as for these my enemies, who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slay them.’ ”

Indeed…

The road to Auschwitz was carefully paved with such religious enlightenment over the millennia.

Luckily, Saint John had other leaders who opposed his final solution strategy…St. Augustine, in particular.

Augustine wanted the G_d-killers kept alive so that when looked upon, others would see their lowly status and be reminded of their sin.

While the advice of both leaders was heeded throughout ages (i.e., scholarly estimates place the number of Jews slaughtered–a la Chrysostom–prior to the Holocaust at at least that same six million figure), such things as the mandatory ghetto, “Jew badge,” and so forth were born in accordance with Augustine’s “more tolerant” approach.

The ghetta–iron foundry in Italian–was the most unhealthy, filthy, lowly vicinity one could live in…just perfect for the G_d-killers. And so, for centuries, Jews were placed under lock and key behind ghetto walls throughout Christendom. Not until Napoleon were they freed from this existence.

Ghetto made it into our everyday language courtesy of the Jew.

Now, in case you think that this was confined to just the West, Islam and the Arabs had their version of what to do with the killers of Prophets, sons of apes and pigs, and kilab yahud (Jew dogs) living among themselves. While not as extensively utilized as in the West, certain parts of the “Arab” World had mellahs in which Jews were confined.

Okay, now for the May 15th AP story…

Unlike many of her (I presume) other stick it to the Jews fellow Jews in the mainstream media and elsewhere, Goldenberg used a more subtle approach in her article, “Settlers Hope To Lure West Bank Tourists.”

Goldenberg “only” made the Jews’ desire to live beyond the nine to fifteen-mile wide ghetto of a state (that the rest of the world now demands the Jew of the Nations return to) look like it’s trying to possess the equivalent of America’s 3,000 mile wide (and much farther beyond) Manifest Destiny, the still existing massive Russian empire, Britain in the Falkland Islands, or the over six million square miles of land conquered, stolen, settled, and forcibly Arabized from mostly native, non-Arab peoples which Arabs now claim exclusively for themselves.

For Goldenberg, the Jews’ claim is just “biblical,” and they stand in the way of Arab desires to create their 22nd state in the West Bank. How dare Jews use religion to stake out such claims! And she quotes other like-minded kapo Jews to support her message. Yet, it’s okay for Arabs to claim the land as a result of their own Jihadi religious wars which led to their acquisition of it in the name of the Dar ul-Islam in the mid-7th century C.E. Once territory in the Dar al-Harb (the realm of war) becomes part of the former, it’s religiously forbidden for it to revert to its earlier status.

Now for a reality check, although such folks usually don’t want to be bothered by the facts…

Unlike Goldenberg’s insinuation that Jews have no claims to the territories in question besides the biblical ones, Jews owned land and lived in Judea (Judean=Jew) and Samaria until they were massacred by Arabs in the 1920s and 1930s.

And for those who make short shrift of the Jews calling those lands by those above names, Judea and Samaria didn’t also become known as the “West Bank” until British imperialism made its presence there in the 20th century.

In 1922, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill awarded Arab nationalism almost 80% of the original Mandate of Palestine which Britain received, after World War I, on April 25, 1920, via the creation of Transjordan on the east bank of the Jordan River. Britain’s East Bank representative, Sir Alec Kirkbride, had much to say about this in his book, A Crackle Of Thorns–as did others as well, including Transjordan’s Emir Abdullah in his memoirs (all carefully documented in my own new book, by the way).

Transjordan later annexed the “west bank” of the Jordan River after the 1948 fighting which saw Israel resurrected on about 12% of the original 1920 Mandate. Holding both banks, the Emirate soon changed its name to Jordan instead. To say that Arabs do not have a state in “Palestine” ( the name Rome bestowed on Judea after the latter’s second major revolt for freedom ) is to simply tell a lie.

At the end of the ’48 fighting, which began with an invasion of a nascent Israel by a half dozen Arab states, the United Nations imposed armistice lines–not final political borders–which made Israel a mere nine to fifteen wide at its waist where the vast majority of Israel’s population, industry, capital, and so forth are located. As President George W. Bush once said, there are driveways in Texas bigger than that…

Jews were then barred from living on lands in Judea and Samaria where they had thousands of years of history and as much right as Arabs to live on.

Regardless of what Goldenberg and her ilk write, the question begs to be asked…especially since they all simply take the Arab version of this story as truth.

Just who is and who is not a “settler” in the land in question?

As I like to remind folks, when the United Nations Relief Works Agency–UNRWA–was set up to assist Arab refugees, the very word refugee had to be redefined to assist those people.

So many Arabs were recent arrivals–settlers–themselves into the Palestinian Mandate that UNRWA had to adjust the very definition of “refugee” from its prior meaning of persons normally and traditionally resident to those who lived in the Mandate for a minimum of only two years prior to 1948.

Get the picture?

Thousands of Arabs had come with Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim Pasha’s invading armies from Egypt in the latter 19th century and remained behind and settled the land.

During the mandatory period after World War I, the Minutes of the League of Nations’ Permanent Mandates Commission recorded additional scores of thousands of Egyptian, Syrian, and other Arab settlers entering into the sparsely populated Mandate of Palestine.

It is estimated that for each one of these incoming Arabs who were recorded, many others crossed the border under cover of darkness to enter into one of the few areas in the region where any economic development was going on because of the influx of Jewish capital. These folks later became known as “native Palestinians.”

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from some of those same “Arab” countries–Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Yemen, and so forth–became labeled, by folks like Goldenberg, as settlers.

This influx of Arabs into the land is well documented (correspondence of Prime Minister Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and so forth), but few–except scholars–usually delve into these sources. And too many of the latter these days tend to have an anti-Israel bias and agenda for a number of reasons…including bread and butter ones.

While this is not to say that there were not native Arabs also living in the Mandate of Palestine, it is to say that many, if not most, of the Arabs were also relative newcomers–settlers–themselves. Many travelers in the 19th century–including Mark Twain–wrote of the sad, depopulated condition of the Holy Land.

Truth be told, many of the villages set up in the West Bank and elsewhere were recent, 20th century settlements established by Arab settlers. And there were Jews whose families never left Israel/Judea/Palestine as well over the centuries, despite the tragedies of two, well-documented major wars for their freedom and independence with Rome, forced conversions of the Byzantines, the Diaspora, Crusades, and other nightmares as well.

But, again, such folks as Goldenberg are not interested with facts…They might be interested in writing what their employers expect, however.

I have to apologize because so much of what I have to write has been stated over and over again. But what other choice is there? The answers to the issues, allegations, and nastiness which are also constantly repeated remain the same…

Whatever will or won’t become of the disputed lands in question, it must be noted that they are indeed disputed territory, not purely Arab land, as Goldenberg and too many of her media colleagues, the United Nations, the American State Department, the EU, and others assume or proclaim. Again, Jews lived and owned property there clear into the 20th century until their slaughter by Arabs and Jordan’s demand that the land become Judenrein after its own illegal land grab in 1948.

Judea and Samaria were non-apportioned parts of the Mandate, and leading authorities such as Eugene Rostow, William O’Brien, and others have stressed that these areas were open to settlement by Jew, Arab, and other residents of the Mandate alike.

Indeed, as we’ve already seen, numerous Arabs poured into the area from all over the Middle East and North Africa. Having one of the highest birth rates in the world, those allegedly “native Palestinians” soon greatly increased in numbers…more Arab settlers setting up more Arab settlements. So why are these “legal” and acceptable but those of the Jews not?

The final draft of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, in the aftermath of the 1967 War that Arabs started with their blockade of Israel (a casus belli) and other hostile acts, called for the creation of secure, more defensible, real borders to replace Israel’s vulnerable armistice line existence which practically begged for it to be bisected by its many surrounding enemies. All the architects of that resolution, from Lord Caradon to Eugene Rostow and others concur here. Israel was not to be forced to withdraw to the suicidal status quo ante.

Yet, when Jews demand 242′s reasonable territorial compromise so they have a bit more depth to fall back upon (beyond the 9-15 mile wide former ghetto existence allocated to them via the UN by the armistice lines of 1949) when they will be predictably attacked again (regardless of how much further Israel bares the necks of its kids for “peace”) they get treated by the Goldenbergs as if they’re trying to recreate the Arabs’ own Umayyad or Abbasid Empires, aka Caliphates.

By the way, because of those Caliphal conquests (even though the Arabs ruled most of those lands for just several centuries before they themselves were replaced by others, notably Turks),in the 20th century’s age of nationalism, Arabs claimed sole rights in a demographically diverse region where scores of millions of non-Arabs also live–subjugated and intimidated by Arab ruler–and denied even a tiny sliver of the same rights Arabs demand for themselves.

Most, if not all, of this is either simply ignored or evidently considered kosher by Israel’s many critics. For them, imperialism, colonialism, settlements, and such are deemed only nasty when non-Arabs so indulge…at least for Tia Goldenberg & Co.

For the latter, it’s not the Arabs’ rejection of Israel, regardless of size, but only the Jews’ attempt to obtain what every other nation expects–real, somewhat defensible borders, instead of the virtual ghetto allocated to them via the armistice lines of 1949–which is the subject of constant ridicule.